Re-Magazine #10 (Claudia)Issue # 10 of [r]Re-Magazine[/r] is dedicated to Claudia who served as a construction to talk about (an exaggeration of) positive qualities. People were interviewed about being tall, successful, happy, beautiful, intelligent etc. and this research material was combined and re-written into Claudia's radiant monologue.

Ich bin tall.Claudia resides in a spacious apartment in Berlin. Its a beautiful home with seven rooms en suite situated in Charlottenburg, an old upper-class part of the city. From the moment she opens the door for me is like a tilt-up in a film. I see two feet in Moroccan slippers. Slowly my gaze glides upwards. An elegant white dressinterrupted by a thin, white beltsmoothly follows the contours of a perfect body. At eye level, I see a simple gold chain around a neck that supports a gorgeous face with penetrating eyes. Eyes that, with a hint amusement, emphasise the first words from Claudias mouth: a cordial Herzlich Willkommen. I feel at home immediately. The house smells of freshly-baked bread and coffee. Claudia leads me along a long corridor to a spacious kitchen. In passing, I see four gracious living rooms, rooms filled with good vibes. Orchids everywhere. In the kitchen, a simple but carefully prepared breakfast awaits us. We talk about being Claudia.

I've never seen such big orchids.
They're my favourites. They've been looking this good for a month, and they should bloom like this for another month. I like to think of orchids as not only an expression of beauty, but as an expression of intelligence as well.

You mean they can read and write?
Sounds foolish, but yes. In a flowery way. I mean, if flowers ruled the world, orchids would definitely be ranked high in society, no?

I never thought about it. Let me double check the memo recorder. Its always such a hassle, recording a conversation.

Is it on?

Yes it's on.

Lets put the recorder here, with a newspaper under it. It much better for the sound quaslity. You should just check to see if its really working.

It wouldnt be the first time I end up with nothing on tape.

We could also put the chairs closer together if you like. Then well be even more certain that we're properly recorded. If you just shift your chair forward a little make sure the plastic caps stay under the legs otherwise Ill get scratches on the parquet. The caps arent fixed.

Its working.

Fine, thats it then. Are you comfy?

Oh yes, I'm fine.

Milk and sugar?

Just milk.

Ach so, Milchkaffee, just like me. They say milk stimulates bonding. That's why macrobiotics don't drink milk. They claim it makes you into one of the herd. Its all a question of how you interpret it, of course.

You have such an amazing house.
Absolutely. It was love at first sight. Max Reinhardt used to live here.

How many rooms do you have?
Seven. And they can be converted into one big space. If I open all the doors, I could easily host a dinner party for a hundred people. When these houses were built, home entertainment was a fashionable thing to do for the upperclasses. Imagine Thomas Mann sitting on my toilet. He writes about it in his diary. Bertolt Brecht, Sonja Sekula, Marlene Dietrich, Von Sternberg, you name it and they've all been inside this house. I'm a big fan of Dietrich, you know, especially because of her relation to Von Sternberg. Both in their films and in their private life they showed such a visual and psychological complexity. Like this mother figure embodied in Dietrich when she dressed in men's clothes. Very hardcore, if you're into it. I can talk for hours on that subject if you don't stop me. (laughs)

Does it affect you, knowing the history of the house?
Absolutely. I feel connected with the past. The rich history of the house was one of the reasons why I bought it.

You live here on your own?
Me and my two cats. I'm a cat person.

What strikes me is that you haven't made any modifications to the house.
Certainly not. Why should I? Im not handicapped. I only made the kitchen counter higher, but I had it redesigned in the old style. I stand in the kitchen for hours, and its important that I dont get a back ache. I just love cooking. A good Haltung is very important. Because of their height, many tall people suffer from poor posturecomplaining all the time about the lack of good clothes, about furniture and houses that are too small. I think restrictions only make me more creative, more inventive. The one thing I always have with me when Im travelling is a shower extension set. In hotels the showers are always too low, especially in Mediterranean countries. But once you know that, you can do one of two things. You can cry, Get me the manager! and get all stressed out, Or you bring along your own shower extension set, have a nice shower and spend your time doing more interesting things.

I've never seen a woman as tall as you.
Me neither! (laughs) Except once in a Fellini movie. You're not the first one to notice, of course. Basically, I grew up with two questions: Is it cold up there? and Do you play basketball?

Does that annoy you? I mean, can we talk about it? Is there something more to being tall than just being tall?
There is definitely more to it. It's a state of being. You know that joke about a Jew and a black man being introduced to each other? The negro asks the Jew: You're Jewish, right? And the Jew answers: You're black, right? My tallness is like being black. It's always there. My appearance is always the exception to the rule. You cant imagine what thats like if youve never been in that position yourself. Just the fact that people have to look up at me has an enormous psychological effect. Also, people remember me much more quickly than I remember them.

How do you deal with that?
Ive always seen being so tall as an advantage. Its fantastic, actually. But I have to say its a choice I made. I'm tall, and I think it's toll. (laughs) And you know saying it's true, make it true. I see my body as the best genetic present that my parents could have given me.

Is it a genetic thing?
Yes and no. I'm the tallest in my family, but we're all tall. My mother is 1m83 and my father is 1m93. My sister is only 1m81. She's a stewardess for Lufthansa. But besides my DNA, because of better nutrition and health care, the average Germans is growing taller by a centimetre per decade. So my tallness is the result of cultural and genetic factors.
We have this story in our family about how my mother, when she was young, came home one day and my grandmother asked her: Was ist loss? You look taller! She answered that she had met somebody and that somebody was my father. They'd met at the dance school and his tallness made her stretch herself up. 1m83 was very tall for a woman at the time, so she was used to hide her tallness by bending over. It wasn't just physical, she grew mentally as well. When you're happy, you stretch.

Thats a nice theory, but is it really true?
Yes, of course. Your attitude claims a certain amount of space around you. Whe you stretch, you show yourself in a confident way. I look good, no?

Incredibly good.
And I feel good too! People only like you when you like yourself. It's that simple. Do you like the jam?

It's delicious.
Hausgemacht. It's my mother's recipe. Just prunes, sugar, a bit of lemon rind and lots of love. I believe in dealing in a loving way with the things and people around me. Lifes beauty is revealed in simple and everyday things. Breathing for example. Deep breathing is incredibly healthy and its something I love to do. I sometimes joke that because of my height, I breath cleaner air. Oxygen is so important. It so much determines who we are. I mean, in prehistoric times, there was 10% more oxygen than there is now, which is why you had all those enormous dinosaurs. Today there are sea spiders in the polar regions that are 30 times bigger and a thousand times heavier than the ones that live elsewhere. The water is colder and less salty there so it contains more oxygen. I think my blood is able to absorb a lot of oxygen. Ive got fantastic blood. I have it checked every six months.

Why?
Just because. Curiosity.

Do you have fantasies about what it would be like to be smaller?
No. Quite the opposite. I mean, Im 1m98, but inside I often feel 2m12. Thats how tall I would have been if I hadnt had the hormone treatment when I was twelve.

You mean you would have been even taller?
Yes. I always feel when I stretch that I connect myself with the other me, the Claudia that could have been 2m12. It feels like a phantom length, if theres such a thing. My inner self is taller than myself and I treat her as my best friend. After all, at the end of the day, she's the one giving me lots of energy and self-confidence. In one way or another, my life is often about that extra 10%. Just that little bit extra. It's something I learned that from my basketball coach when I was young. He was like a father to me. He kept pushing me by saying: Strecke dich! Jump higher! It's not high enough! Reach out! And I did what he said. It's wonderful for a tall person like me if someone encourages you to jump higher.

Why did you have the hormone treatment?
My parents as well as the doctor persuaded me to have hormone treatment. I had the first consultation when I was twelve, three weeks before my thirteenth birthday. My parents took me to a doctor. He took X-rays of my hand bones and he estimated that I would grow to 2m12. I couldn't believe it! (laughs) I was really looking forward to growing so tall. I thought the pills would make me grow faster instead of stopping me grow. (laughs) It was a complete misunderstanding.

So they forced you into the treatment?
No. They were right to do so. It was just that I liked the feeling of growing so much. I used to dream about growing endlessly. At times, I really didn't know where my body began and where it ended. Do you know Barbapappa?

Yes.
That was my nickname, Barbaclaudia. I always struggled with furniture, because my limbs were so ungainly. I often bumped into things. I was growing so fast that I couldn't stand up in the morning. If I rushed out of bed, I would fall down. So I had to sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes and wait for my body to start functioning. It was a blood circulation thing

You didnt see that as a problem?
No, I loved it! But like I told you before, it has always been a personal choice to not problematise my tallness. My body was developing, so of course I could feel a certain itch in my Gelänke, but it wasnt really painful. Not at all. In fact, this itch was quiet sensational and I even became sort of addicted to it. Getting up in the morning was an adventure in slow-motion. I could feel my body slowly waking up. I had to hold my own hands, otherwise I had the feeling that they would fall off. I have always loved science-fiction and I often felt like a machine or an alien myself. Bit by bit, I could coordinate my limbs, sit up, stretch my arms and hands, then read a bit and eventually I could stand up. If you call this process just painful, you exclude the gift of awareness that you get from it. It was just such a nice way to start the day. Tell me, do you like science fiction?

Some of it, yes.
I think science fiction is very interesting, I mean, as a playground for ideologies. Living in the present makes no sense if you don't concentrate on what the future might be. Could we talk about that too? We have no idea of how many things will change in the next decade. Being two metres tall will be the average somewhere in the next century. I connect my inner Claudia with the future, you know. How tall are you?

I don't know exactly, 1m82 or 1m84.
Imagine another you that is 15 centimetres taller. Wouldn't you want to confide in him?

Maybe, I never thought about it
He could be your buddy, your confidant, your inner parent. Whatever you want to call it. I believe in a certain degree of humility, which shows itself in looking up to something or someone. Asking for advice. Relating to a higher level of ambition. Not like in religion, but as a form of therapy or consulting. As long as you recognise that it has some value.

Weve got you to look up to.
Its funny you say that, but its true. Last week a total stranger came up to me and said, You can do it! Go out there and do it! I know you can. It wasnt clear why he said it to me of all people, but I often have these sorts of experiences. People come up to me and ask to touch me. It seems that looking up to someone as tall as I am has some value for them. Thats why the idea of a 2m12 Claudia is so important for me.

What sort of value is that?
I think it enables them to stand back from their own problems, and have a different perspective. Maybe it has to do with this inner tallness again.

In what way?
Everyday you make choices. You choose your friends. You choose the degree to which you allow your work and your private life to be bound up with each other. Its a constant responsibility. Wrong friends? You chose them yourself. Wrong surroundings? The same thing. If you blame the circumstances then you let the solution slip. But if, instead, you get the opportunity to address a larger version of yourself, to look up to someone and ask advice and not have to decide everything on your own. I think it's a great concept, it works for me and I'm living proof that it works.

Did the hormones stop the itching?
Not immediately. I cant remember exactly. I do remember the cure and that the medicine was called Astormine. It is the same medicine that women get when they are in the menopause. Every morning I had to take four pills before breakfast. The effect of was that my body had the impression that I was already 21 or 22, instead of being only 13. My Hormonhaushalt was completely regulated by the treatment. Normally a girl starts menstruating very irregularly, but in my case, the hormones started my first menstruation much earlier, but also totally regulated my monthly Menstruationszyklus. I jumped from childhood into adulthood almost overnight.

At age 13? I mean you're supposed to be a child at that age.
Of course, I still played outdoors and did the sort of things most kids do at that age, but because of the hormones I matured mentally much more quickly than my peers. Im glad I had the hormone treatment for no other reason than that. The whole transformation from girl to woman was actually one big party for me.

In what way?
Well, with an adult consciousness I was able to recognise and value the burgeoning beauty of my own body. Because I was able to look at myself with the eyes of an adult, I quickly learned who I was. And my tallness is of course a large part of my identity. Just the fact that people always look at me when I pass by. When I walk down the street I often feel like Im on television. People look at me and make comments as if I cant hear them, like theyre sitting on the couch watching TV and eating crisps and drinking beer. Like in Café Einstein recently, I was drinking a cup of coffee and I heard someone at the next table say, ...and now shes drinking coffee. Its become second nature for me to see myself from a distance. But, come to think of it, that consciousness only really began with the hormone treatment. Theres something cruel about the concepts of puberty and adolescence. Most people waste the best years of your life with doubt and low self-esteem, but I was able to skip that whole degrading process. So there was room to discover the beauty of my body in a different way. Beauty needs to be maintained, but if you start early with minor maintenance then you can postpone the major maintenance. I know it sounds cliché, but the awareness of aging only comes when you get older. My advantage was that at a young age I could already look with an adults eye at that romping Barbaclaudia body I had. (laughs)

But how exactly did you perceive your body then at, lets say, age 14?
I've always loved my body and how it connected to my personality. When I look at my old school pictures there's always a head of difference between me and the second tallest. One time the photographer even asked me to lie down in front of the rest, because otherwise I would not fit in the frame. I remember girlfriends complaining about almost everything. No boobs, too much asswhere am I going with this? Despite being exceptionally tall, whenever I looked in the mirror, I felt complete. And basically, that hasn't changed. I enjoy living with and in my body. I enjoy looking at my body and I enjoy how other people enjoy looking at my body as well. After my Arbitur, I lived in London for a while, just for something different to do. I had rented a modest room in Brixton and there was this street going downhill. For me it was like a catwalk. Every night Id walk down that street and everybody would notice me. Men, mostly black cabdrivers, waiting down the road, saw me coming a mile away and reacted in a strong way, giving me high fives and such. I enjoyed that so much.

How's your relationship with men?
Very healthy, I'd say. (laughs)

Is there any truth in the cliché that men prefer small women?
Keine blasse ahnung! I dont have any experience with that of course. (laughs) I mean, the opposite is true as well. It happens quiet often that a smaller man comes up to me to express his admiration. Once, I was at a party talking with a small guy and he was drunk. He was standing in front of me and then he bit my tit. It was right in front of his face, so for him it was a logical thing to do.

Didn't you feel harassed?
No, in that context I thought it was a really good joke. (laughs)

MelanchotopiaFrom large-scale interventions to very simple gestures, Melanchotopia supports a range of artistic practices that go beyond the classical approach to displaying art in public space. Working with the existing dynamics of the city, Witte de Withs intention is to bring forward the diverse layers of daily life in Rotterdam, creating a rich framework for subjective encounters. It is an exhibition about the reality of Rotterdam.

FrenhoferFrenhofer is the protagonist in Balzac's The Unknown Masterpiece, a painter whose life is destroyed by his ambition. My website frenhofer.nl is the opposite: an online playground for (mostly) drawings. Drawing has been my escape from a heavy burn out and I experienced that the healing power of a hand-head-heart connection has little to do with all the don'ts of the art world. Its a good moment to start from scratch. Prices from 30 to 300 euro.

Herman HeijermansIve always thought of photography as something very magical and it is my belief that this is based on a genuine experience: in my early childhood there must have been no sharp distinction between a real thing and its image. In the same way that kids see themselves as inseparable from their mother until the age of three, I thought that object and image were simply two different manifestations of the same energy.

HomageSince 2008 there has been a lively dialogue in the museum between old masters and present-day artists. Arnoud Holleman (Haarlem, 1964) is taking this a step further. He made a film in the Schutterszaal in which ï¿½watchingï¿½ is key. Frans Halsï¿½s world-famous civic guard works and a selection of sculptures by Mari Andriessen, Han Wezelaar, Charlotte van Pallandt and others create the background for a cast of eighteen actors.

The Trouble With ValueWhat practices bring us closer to understanding the potential of art to represent different notions of value in the contemporary? How can we counter the certain apathy of the contemporary to engage with positions that resist this mood and present us with challenging perspectives on value? The project attempts to locate artistic and institutional practices that offer viewpoints beyond the strategy of blending-in and conforming to the rules.

PolaroidPolaroid photo of the former Polaroid factory in Enschede. I photographed the logo in 2001 as research for 'Wij', an exhibition at Kunstvereniging Diepenheim investigating the cultural identity of the Twente region. The factory closed in 2008 and the text sign has been removed in 2009. Polaroid is an edition of 20, still for sale on frenhofer.nl.

Temporary Stedelijk 2The Stedelijk Museum proudly announces the gift of 63 artworks from Dutch collector Maurice van Valen. Beginning May 10, 2011, a selection of works will be presented at the Stedelijk Museum during Temporary Stedelijk 2, as part of the ground floor installation. The Van Valen gift is notable for how it complements and builds upon the representation of several artists in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum.

RetitledFor the last couple of years in a row, artists had been invited who felt at home in a big show environment. This had thrown up a number of lively and playful installations, but this year the budding tradition was in jeopardy: for a variety of reasons there was next to no money for art projects. The only kitty in the budget that might be called upon had been set aside for the printing of the half a million paper napkins that were to be used during the festival.

8th Gwangju BiennaleAs an artist and writer, Arnoud Hollemans extraordinarily diverse output is connected by a strong thematic concern with the life and significance of images. Often this concern is manifested through acts of appropriation that transform an images meaning through a shift in context, or a removal of contextual elements. This concern with the lives of images has also led him to create works that explore the historical prohibitions on image making.

Rodin researchFrom 2005 onwards, I have been focusing on Rodin as a research topic. The main question that I ask myself is in what way Rodin consciously helped shaping the mythical proportions of his own artistic persona. By studying his life and works and by studying the timeframe of the second half of the nineteenth century  in which his work came to existence  I seek to create a context of paralel references as a source of inspiration for nowadays artistic practice.

NowWhat happens is that the grit under your feet mixes with the noise in your head. And in the monotony of the constant succession of footsteps, residual thoughts escape like intestinal slugs. Initially this is unpleasant. The physical exertion is a booster, the cadence of your breathing and your footsteps become the haunted baseline under the story of your life, as you recount it to yourself at that moment.

Questioning HistoryIn visual art and photography there has been growing interest in history over the past few years - and in reflection on the past in particular. This interest relates to historiography, the oral tradition, historical consciousness and collective memory. Visual artists who address these themes find themselves in a highly relevant social context. The exhibition encompasses a diversity of work by 19 distinguished artists.

OnkenhoutStaring at the picture of the garden on the postcard I catch a glimpse of my mother in a version of her life that she never lived, one in which Nico had gotten in touch, after that evening out. Perhaps now shed have a different surname and be sitting by a different fire drinking wine with a different child. In a moment that feels like an oedipal short circuit, I experience something impossible: that I never existed.

Immovably CentredEverything just chucked away. Subsidy handed back. A total failure. Fine. Well done. Id like to know when youre not going to be a failure. If youre not. And whether Im going to witness it in this lifetime. So vain. So weak. So lacking in backbone. I have to keep the whole show on the road while you just sit upstairs crying at your desk, your tears staining what youre only going to scrunch up again any second and toss into the corner. On that laptop of yours.

The Return of Religion and Other MythsThe Return of Religion and Other Myths is a large-scale multifaceted project, consisting of the exhibition The Art of Iconoclasm, a discourse program taking place in early 2009 titled On Post-Secularism, and the publication of a BAK Critical Reader on the subject in 2009. The project explores the popular assumption of the return of religion to the public sphere, contemporary politics, and the media in the West as a constitutive "myth."

On ne touche pasOne image is not the same as the other and there are also images that know their place: images that not only form a world in themselves but also refer to a more complex reality beyond themselves. And this is what I would like to focus on in this lecture, with the help of my film Museum, dating from 1998. For me, reflection on earlier works is not meant to dwell in the past. It is meant to stimulate preciseness and to develop internal coherence.

More of the samePhoto column in Amsterdam Weekly, focusing on similarities in the city environment. Based on the '700 centenboek' from 1975, in which Jos Houweling photographed objects throughout the city of Amsterdam in the same manner. The photo column appeared biweekly and was combined with the work of Hans Eijkelboom, whose series focus on similar human behavior or similar dress codes.

NieuwkomerFor months after I first stood on that little bridge, I continued to circle around the windmills. Not only with my camera, but also with a microphone. When you look closer, the polder turns out to be an arena of conflicting interests. The cluttering of the landscape stands in opposition to climatological necessity; economic and ecological interests are locking horns for dominance; innovation oriented towards the future has to compete with the appreciation for history.

MarcelLadies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking, earth has disappeared. As we will not be able to crash, we will continue flying until we run out of fuel. Well so do something about it youve been wining about it for years. Well. Halfway. Everythings fine. Stay calm. Come on guys whats the big idea? You know, these days when somebody on the street says sorry its a junky. You see you dont get it. Youre just a character in someone elses plot.

Call meIts either filthy thoughts or intellectual blah-blah, and nothing in between. Look closer. More closer. Look at me! You hear me?! If theres any reason for me to be ashamed, its you. The only reason Im standing in front of the town hall is because I happened to have been created by a world-famous sculptor: Rodin, the genius of deep emotions and existential gestures. Yeah right. The way Im standing here, Rodin is the only person whos never once laid a finger on me.

Just in Time!Guest curator Kopsa asked the artists who submitted proposals for Just in Time to define what they regarded as necessary. Just in Time (JIT) is the name of an economic principle, based on producing the right component at the right place at the right moment, in order to prevent waste. Artists manage their time in the opposite manner. They deliberately choose indirection, and are open to mistakes and unexpected tangents.

The Second CommandmentThe best way to make the difference between meaning and madness is by saying the things you have to say as precisely as possible, with every means available to you. In that respect, the recontextualisation of older work is one of the strategies that could be investigated in more depth. Sometimes it makes more sense to re-present old work than to simply produce for productions sake and prematurely declare the old as passé.

HesterIn the drawing, she has her head down because she was reading. Shes spent most of her life reading, its her way out of her depression. I remember being quite conscious of drawing her double chin, since she hates it. My mother hates the fact that shes losing her jawbone. I thought, No, Ive got to scrub it out. So I drew a shadow there. But these dark areas, the chin and the bags, emphasize her depression more than they show her reading a book.

Re-MagazineRe-Magazine's great virtue is its willingness to expose sentiments that seldom find public expression, most often relating to the apparently trivial experiences and memories that make up the larger part of existence. Alongside this editorial idiosyncrasy, it is beautifully designed and photographed, each issue adopting a form to suit its subject - Emily King, Frieze, October 2003.

Re-Magazine #12 (Hester)The door slammed behind us and we got locked out. We decided to deal with that later and first take the furniture down to the car. So we got into the lift with the filing cabinet and then the lift stuck. There was hardly anyone in this building, I was maybe one of only five people that had moved in. We were stuck in the lift for three hours and every time we heard a noise wed bang on the door. Eventually somebody came past and realised we were stuck and went to get help. When we got out of the lift we found out the car had been clamped while wed been stuck, which meant a penalty of 120 pounds.

Re-Magazine #11 (Marcel)I forced myself not to spit, but to swallow. The undissolved salt got stuck to the back of my throat and oesophagus. I ended up nearly choking. It was as if I had eaten a mouthful of sand. I then began to drink one glass of water after another, but the salty taste persisted. It was terrible and wonderful at the same time, and in some strange way physically exhausting. I had eaten about 30 grams of salt, only five times the recommended daily allowance. Committing suicide can be very easy: one kilo of salt is all it takes.

Ken ParkWillem de Rooij in Frieze magazine: Holleman looped the legendary shot of one the protagonists relieving himself after a night of steady drinking, emptying a last can of beer while doing so. After a while the calm splashing becomes reminiscent of a Zen fountain rather than a toilet, forming the audio backdrop to the show. Holleman filmed this fragment with a video camera in a cinema, in an exploration of appropriation, as well as of the status of the original images.

Solipsistic SkyHe ejaculated on the paper, outlining the blobs with watercolour crayon. Once it had all dried, he made everything around these constellations black with pencil. The drawing then became a window looking out towards a cosmos-like world, full of nothingness. This blackening process was a monotonous task, which allowed him to withdraw happily into the right side of the brain, where timelessness rules.

My Dad Playing PianoThe closet in his study kept the usual mix of essential and trivial: drawings from high school, student paraphernalia and tons of paper work from his job as a teacher. In an old shoebox we found a microphone and some old music cassettes. When he had retired, eight years before his death, he had picked up playing the piano again. He had taken lessons again and had studied every day. Sometimes he would make a recording of the pieces that he played, as a reality check.

Re- Magazine #9 (John)I still remember the moment perfectly, it was summer and I thought, Ill disappear in the autumn. And thats what I did. I hatched my plan in secret. What surprised me was that my decision didnt calm me down. I heard people who commit suicide live in great harmony with themselves and their surroundings during the period between deciding and carrying it out. For as long as I can remember Ive felt hustled, and that feeling only grew worse after my decision.

Family and friendsSeven drawings of penises in various forms and sizes. Black pencil on 9" x 11" sheets of paper. First published in Butt magazine # 4, summer 2002 and later in Butt book - adventures in 21st century gay subculture, 2006. Based on dating site profile pics, named 'Dieter', 'Bram', 'Henk', 'Andrew', 'Harry', 'Erik', 'Martin' and 'Edward'. The drawings are framed in individual frames and for sale as a group. Price on request.

Driving Miss PalmenI understand why you want to be a writer. Its better to be mediocre and famous than just being mediocre. But the difference between you and me is that Im able to create a character of myself in a story I choose to live in. And you, Im sorry to say, are not. That makes me a writer and you just a character in someone elses plot. And as for my work: The big misunderstanding about my work is that critics keep comparing the fictious Connie Palmen with the real Connie Palmen, instead of comparing her to other great characters in litterature, like Madame Bovary, or Lolita...

Untitled (Staphorst)In this mediation between being and non-being we can do nothing else than continually behave as camera-genic as possible. See and be seen via the image has become a cultural and existential duty. This primacy of image and visibility however is no universal, natural condition: Islams interdict on images originally, according to the second commandment, also applied to Christendom.

Me and MadonnaWhen she comes past I click away hysterically. Not even with the intention of getting her picture but more because Im in the press enclosure and have to prove that Im a photographer or so. Im so busy with the camera and she goes by so fast that I hardly catch a glimpse of her. The print I have made is blurred. Also that night was the first time she showed up with a black hairdo instead of her usual blonde, so nobody recognized her on the photo.

Me and PaoloMasked newspaper spread. Photo shows Italian soccer player Paolo de Canio, saluting his fans in nazi-style while celebrating the victory for SS Lazio over AS Roma in january 2005. Text at bottom centre: I just wanted to celebrate with my fans. A photographer using a camera that takes 500 frames a minute just caught this moment in the celebration and made it look as if I held my right hand in that position.

I = for Impasse (Re- #4)I meet a lot of people, both friends and strangers, who are in the middle of their personal acts of expression, but when I hear them talking, and compare their intentions to the final result, I very often think that the process of making is better than the expression of the product itself. I wish I could blame this on their lack of talent, but when I look at the results of my own acts of expression, I get the same feeling that a documentary about the making of that particular act of expression would have been much more interesting.

Me and BertThat summer I was into the differences and parallels between drawing and photography. I saw myself as a human camera and tried to copy photos as precisely as possible. I was intrigued by the fact that I had to work for hours or days or weeks on end and would still fail to come anywhere close to what the camera had seen in a split second. One night, after a long day of working with minute precision and concentration, I went out to a bar and ran into Bert.

From the Corner of the EyeFor many artists, sexual orientation is just one of the many significant aspects in their work, but is an aspect which is often ignored in exhibitions and art criticism. From the Corner of the Eye offers an image of contemporary visual arts, seen from a "queer" perspective. In this exhibition, it is hoped that the homosexual gaze will sometimes be emphatically present and at other times will disappear into the background.

MuseumMuseum (1998) is a re-mastered, projected version of a 1980s video by French gay porn director J. P. Cadinot. After Holleman cut out all the sex scenes, all that is left are young boys in hot pants and uniforms wandering aimlessly through a cheap film set of rooms in a nondescript museum. The eclectic art collection functions merely as a prop, but since there is no apparent action either, its not clear what the props are for.

Wij / WeThe definition of the word definition is: the description of the essence of something in one or two highly precise and succinctly formulated sentences. That is by no means easy, and we certainly dont pretend to be able to do so. Nevertheless, there are a lot of characteristics that we find interesting and that we come up against in wondering about what might be typical of the region known as Twente. But those things arent so much absolute as they are relative.

Life is a Dream Come TrueIn most of my dreams there are no images or storylines to assign to their nightmarish feeling. They are more about certain dynamics, of shrinking and growing, for example, or being crushed. My body caving in on itself. As a depressed person I live inside my head and theres always a sense that my body is deteriorating and weak. So feelings of weakness and lightheadedness come to me naturally. Theres a vacancy in me that is connected to my dreams.

Time WarpA cinematic report on the processes of growth and change taking place on W.G. Witteveenplein in Rotterdam. Each film begins with the construction of the park in early 2003 and shows the various changes that have taken place so far. The films are supplemented four times a year with new material. This will result in five twelve-minute films in 2023. Collaborative project with Erwins Driessens & Maria Verstappen.

Me and SusanIve always thought of photography as something very magical and it is my belief that this is based on a genuine experience: in my early childhood there must have been no sharp distinction between a real thing and its image. In the same way that kids see themselves as inseparable from their mother until the age of three, I thought that object and image were simply two different manifestations of the same energy.

Auntie Truus and Auntie MokWith utmost concentration I tried to capture the atmosphere in the photos as closely as possible, but again and again I would screw up somewhere halfway. Either the balance in shading wasnt right, or I couldnt get the expressions right on their faces. When I finally managed to give Auntie Truus the right expression, I reached the point where I had a physical sensation of being on that lawn on Texel again on that day in 1969, asking Auntie Truus and Auntie Mok to pose for me. At that very moment, reality as such was redefined as an object for exhibition.

Unframed drawingIn later years, after being trained as a visual artist, I got interested in the differences and parallels between drawing and photography. When I redrew a photograph of a young boy looking at a horizontal piece of paper, I re-experienced something of that primitive power of the image: the boy and I coincided and somewhere inbetween, reality as such was redefined as an object for exhibition. Photos from installation at Stedelijk Museum.